Media release: Graphic Impact – Our Lives in Print

GLASGOW Print Studio is delighted to announce that it has been awarded £18,000 in funding from the William Grant Foundation for a two-year project – Graphic Impact: Our Lives in Print.

The project focuses on the early days of Glasgow Print Studio (1972-1989). The collection includes a much smaller amount of material from this period, with little information on the founding members and their role in running the workshop and developing the studio.

The project begins in April 2018 with the recording of oral histories to enrich our collection, establish the importance of printmaking as a medium and show its importance to art in the west of Scotland. The project will culminate in a group-curated exhibition in the Trongate 103 Foyer Gallery, which will present and celebrate prints made by women from the archive. A digital resource will also be launched, which will include information collected during the project.

An exciting new collaborative Print Club model will bring together community groups and printmaking members to participate in an ambitious joint engagement project over an extended period. The Print Club will be open to all artist members and invited community groups and involvement is encouraged from both men and women. Print Club participants will learn about, select and respond to prints in the archive. This is a new way to involve the current artist member community (of 300 people) in working with the studio’s history and collection.

Members will bring and share printmaking experience and learn about the history of the organisation and its artists, in order to select a work for the show or to create a new print. The community groups will learn fine art printmaking techniques and create new prints for themselves, as well as develop research skills and make connections with the artists in the archive as well as with artist members.

The project will be led by archive curator, Kerry Patterson, and education officer, Sarah Stewart.

The archive curator says: “This generous funding from the William Grant Foundation will enable us to find out more about the organisation and about our collection. We will be able to connect our collection with the people who made it and who were involved with the history of the organisation.”

Sarah Stewart adds: “This continued support from the William Grant Foundation is fantastic. It will enable us to continue exploring ways we can develop our community engagement activities through a flexible programme of hands-on activities informed by printmaking members and local community groups who take part in Print Club.”

A launch event for the project will be held on Saturday 23rd June from 2pm to 4pm. Come along to find out more about how to get involved with the project, see printmaking demonstrations in our workshop and get the opportunity to pull a print. Families are welcome but as the workshop is a working environment, children must be supervised at all times.

Glasgow Print Studio was established as an artists’ workshop in 1972 by the eight founding members: Bill Blacker, Jimmy Cosgrove, John Faulds, Beth Fisher, Sheena McGregor, Jacki Parry, Philip Reeves and Eileen Ormiston. The first premises were a flat in St Vincent Crescent in Finnieston before moving to larger premises on Ingram Street in 1976 and finally to King Street in 1988, where the studio is now part of the Trongate 103 Arts Centre.

The studio is now an internationally-acclaimed centre of excellence in fine art printmaking, promoting contemporary and innovative printmaking through supporting artists, exhibitions, learning and conservation. Providing facilities for the production of etchings, relief prints and screenprints, Glasgow Print Studio has a membership of over 300 artists who use the custom-built workshop. The studio also has two exhibition spaces hosting an exhibitions programme and runs a learning programme focused on teaching and developing understanding of fine art printmaking.

The studio has a print publishing programme, where an artist is invited to the studio to work with a master printmaker to make an edition of original prints. Glasgow Print Studio is an organisation with charitable status that exists to encourage and promote the art of printmaking; it is supported by the Creative Scotland and Glasgow City Council.

About Glasgow Print Studio Archive Collection

The collection contains over 4,500 items made by Scottish and international artists and dating from the 1970s to the present day. These include fine art prints and related material (blocks, plates, stage proofs, preparatory material) as well as items related to the history of the organisation such as exhibition posters and photographs of the gallery and workshop. Artists represented in the collection include: Sam Ainsley, Claire Barclay, Elizabeth Blackadder, Christine Borland, Martin Boyce, John Byrne, Eileen Cooper, Ken Currie, Alasdair Gray, Elspeth Lamb, Scott Myles, Jacki Parry, Toby Paterson, Ciara Phillips, John Taylor and Adrian Wiszniewski.